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Choosing a Programming Language Systematically@ignis I was mainly supporting your point. The bit about "derivatives" was an aside. I'm rather tired of people halting discussion via conveniently dismissing Wikipedia when a) it has long been shown to be comparably accurate and b) the same people happily accept other search results with remarkably fewer citations. I digress: I truly don't understand why you're being so defensive, and exaggerating the subtle difference between "influence" and "derivative". What I find most baffling is that the very article you refer to in your next comment literally uses both words interchangeably itself.

Oct9

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Choosing a Programming Language Systematically@ignis That depends how you define "derivative". Practically every language is related to other languages these days. Just look at the Wikipedia sidebar for any programming language and note the lengthy "Influenced by" list. But you are absolutely right that even asking this question shows that the CEO isn't qualified to be making these decisions. Any kind of "derivative" information is only useful for historical curiosity; it should not have anything at all to do with choosing a language.

Sep5

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Why are the <b> and <i> tags deprecated?'So for an audio based browser the "i" for italic is pretty useless as you cannot have italic speech.' ... Yes, and so is <img> because you can't speak an image, and a system without sound hardware can't present <audio>. Sometimes presentation is the very purpose of an element, and it doesn't need to be universally supported (and unlike other potentially unsupported elements, <i> doesn't need alt text because the fact that it's italic is the only information lost). The real problem is when people say i when they meanem.

Why is PHP's method of comparing different types bad?Hence the question: And if the number behavior is not the basis of your expection, then what is? Without the "because" connection, there is no support given in your answer. Why, given "2" < "100", would you expect that "2x" < "100x"? What is your point of reference?

Feb6

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Why is PHP's method of comparing different types bad?Your last sentence is true, but inapplicable: "x should be true for strings because it is true for numbers"means"what is true for numbers should be true for strings"; I did not need to infer any "reverse" holding true because the conclusion was already directly given. And if the number behavior is not the basis of your expectation, then what is?

Feb6

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Why is PHP's method of comparing different types bad?"I nowhere said that" -- Exactly. The fact that you don't agree with this shows the logical inconsistency of your point. If we should expect the results to be the same after adding to both sides because that is true with numbers, then we should expect string adding rules to be consistent with the numerical counterpart as well.

Why is PHP's method of comparing different types bad?I interpret "factual" as "objectively true" and find your statement oxymoronic because a "negative" is something undesirable and desire is subjective. Ultimately, it comes down to how humans want to be able to express logic.

Feb5

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Why is PHP's method of comparing different types bad?@Izkata Of course the only reason we should do integer parsing is if do want to handle the formatting exception. If we just want to check if it "equals 2" the same way that PHP does (regardless of whether it is actually a number), the equivalent code is simply if user_choice == str(2), compared to Java's if (user_choice.equals(String.valueOf(2))).